Meeting of 1853, a favourite for the Marquess of Anglesey's Stakes. I can't recall his name, which was one of them tongue-twisters; howsomever, I know that the noble owner had stabled him at The Crown. Very early in the morning of the race, someone scoops a hole in the stable wall and pushes through it a carrot hollowed out and filled with arsenic. The poor beast must have died at once; the offender was never caught. Dr Palmer's Doubt won that race at useful odds. Mind, I'm saying nothing, not having been in Rugeley at the time; but those are the facts, I believe.
Dr Palmer plunged in his betting, and I thought it very rum that he never changed countenance whatever happened. He wasn't the man to thrust a walking-stick through a pierglass in celebration of a victory, as I have seen done. We all used to notice him when he came back from the races and looked in at the stables. None of us could tell whether he had won or lost. Only once did
I see him out of temper, and that was nearly at the end of his run. A fellow named George Bate, formerly a farmer, was put in charge of us then, and took a sudden dislike to the Doctor. Maybe he had his reasons. Maybe also they'll appear at the trial, for he's been summoned to London as a witness, and so has yours obediently . . .
At any rate, one day George Bate comes to me, and says:' Harry, what's passed in the eight-acre field?' 'How should I know?' I asks.
'Come and take a morris down there!' says he. So we stroll through the home-paddock, and into the eight- acre, and he says to me: 'The turf's mighty cut about. It's as if the mares have been galloping about in the night. Did you hear aught?'
I says: 'No, I didn't.' Then I pointed and said: 'Lookee, Mr Bate, here's the mark of a hound's paw on this moleheap, and it's made fresh! However did a hound happen in?'
So I went to see whether the mares had come to harm, and we found that the Duchess of Kent had slipped her foal, as Goldfinder had one night a week before; nor did we discover any signs of it nowhere. The hounds must have ate it. Mr Bate, he tried to tie the blame on me, but I told him that I wouldn't be made a scapegoat. It was none of my business to see that the gaps were stopped. He argued a bit, but I held my ground, and presently we heard the sound of wheels, and along came Dr Palmer in a fly. He asks after the Duchess.
I says:' Sorry to tell you, Sir, she's had an accident—slipped her foal’
He turned a trifle' pale and says: 'You rascal, how did that occur?'
'Ask Mr Bate’ I said, 'it's his affair, not mine.'
'George,' cries Dr Palmer, 'what in the Lord's name happened to the poor creature?'
George looks steadily at him and says:' She was run by hounds, last night. It will be some enemy of yours, Sir, popped them in through the hedge/
'You'll pay for this, George, as I live!' shouts the Doctor.
Then George answers quietly: 'You should have taken an insurance policy for a few thousand pounds on the foal's life; the same as you tried to do with mine.'
At once the Doctor's manner changes. He put a hand on George's shoulder. 'Why, George/ he says sorrowfully. 'You didn't owe me that smack in the face. Surely you knew we were gammoning?'
But George didn't change his tone, not he. He says: ' You and your precious friends Cook and Jerry Smith—I owed you something for that trick you played on me. And now I think we're quits.'
He turns his back and walks away.
Dr Palmer looks at me, and an unhappier face I seldom saw. But then he shrugs and twiddles a forefinger at his temples: 'George's daft,' says he to me, 'don't pay any attention to him! It was all on account of a practical joke concocted by Mr Cook and Mr Smith, and others of my friends, which he took in earnest. But it's a bore about that foal. I had great hopes from it. Maybe Tom Masters set those hounds at the mares. If so, I'll be even with him, you'll see. I'll poison the lot of them!' I made no answer, thinking silence to be the safer course.
The Doctor goes away, and an hour later comes back with a gun, which he shows me how to load and fire, and gives me cartridges. 'Keep this by you in the cornstore, Harry,' says he. 'And if you sec anyone around here behaving in a suspicious manner, don't hesitate to shoot. I won't have my valuable foals murdered. That's the second in ten days.'
'Very good, Sir,' I says, but I resolved never to touch the weapon, whatever might come to pass.
I told George Bate about the gun, and he gave me a wise look. 'You had better lose them cartridges, Harry,' says he, 'because now that the insurance company have refused to insure my life for Palmer, he won't benefit nothing by my accidental death, the same as he's benefited from others. That Inspector Field who came down the other day told me the whole story; but I was to keep my mouth shut, which I do.'
'Here are the cartridges, Master Bate,' says I, and he takes and puts them in his pocket and goes away, whistling. That happened not long before Dr Palmer's arrest—the first week in November, it must have been.
AN UNFORTUNATE SERIES OF DEATHS
AT his wife's entreaty, Dr Palmer invited her mother, Mrs Thornton, to come and live with them. Copious draughts of gin, scarcely supported by any food, had now reduced her to a pitiable state. The swarm of cats that surrounded her must starve or fend for themselves, and her fine' residence had deteriorated sadly: in another couple of years it would be almost valueless. Dr Palmer therefore persuaded Mrs Thornton to write him three cheques, in the amount of twenty or thirty pounds each, which would enable him to pay for the necessary repairs on her behalf. But he found it hard to wean the poor woman away from the house, even under colour of making it more comfortable for her, because, as she told a neighbour: 'I'll not live long, once I'm away!'
On January 6th, 1849, Mrs Thornton was found stretched dead-drunk on the dining-room floor, a victim of acute
Soon, however, Annie wished that accommodation might have been found elsewhere for her mother, who used to shriek and scream in the night, arousing the whole household, and swear terribly, especially at 'that awful devil Palmer', who was accused of robbing her and murdering the faithful cats. The swarm of cats had, indeed, been mercifully destroyed by him, being so thin and mangy that no neighbour would offer them a home. She demanded gin all day long, but Dr Palmer refused to allow her a drop, which made the case worse. When she began to complain of violent headaches and sickness, and desired to see 'a real doctor, not a robber and murderer', he obligingly called in old Dr Bamford. Dr Bamford shook his head dolefully as he remarked: 'Gin is her poison, but it's also her sole medicine; I'd let her take a little now and then, if I were you, Billy, my boy. But make it a condition that she eats at the same time. And an effervescent mixture might be helpful.'
Dr Palmer therefore conceded her a little gin, but still she would not eat, and raised such a hubbub when he pressed thinly sliced bread and butter on her, that for his wife's sake he added an opiate to the next noggin. Since Annie no longer ventured into the sickroom, lest the distress it occasioned might dry up or sour her milk, and hazard the life of their infant son, Dr Palmer took charge of the nursing himself, with the help of Mrs Bradshaw, the
handywoman. Annie suggested that Dr Knight should be called, for a second opinion; but he was suffering from a severe cold and could not come until January 14th—when he briefly examined the patient, shook his head, as Dr Bamford had done, and went off without demanding a fee. Four days later, Mrs Thornton died in a wandering delirium, and Dr Bamford duly signed the death certificate, ascribing her death to apoplexy. 'It would not be seemly to put 'died of gin and prolonged self-neglect',' he remarked.
The nine houses in which Mrs Thornton had a life-interest now reverted to Mr Shallcross as the heir-at-law— but not before Dr Palmer had paid a further sum out of his own pocket towards their repair. Mrs Thornton, it appears, had been responsible, as landlady, for mending the fissures in the walls and the leaks in the roof but, since she had failed to do so, the tenants had revenged themselves by not paying rent. That Dr Palmer thus acted against his own interest in repairing these houses is an effectual proof that, so far from poisoning Mrs Thornton, as has since been unkindly alleged, he had hoped, by bringing the sick creature home, at great inconvenience, to increase her span of life. She was not yet fifty years old and, her expenses being small, the longer she lived, the better for the Palmers as her guardians.
Mr Shallcross, when informed of Mrs Thornton's death, claimed the property, and not only refused to allow Dr Palmer anything for the repairs, but when these were presently completed, and the tenants therefore paid their arrears, demanded the entire sum, amounting to nearly five hundred pounds. Dr Palmer brought an action against him, but Shallcross won the case.
An even more unfortunate event happened two or three months later. Old Mrs Palmer's brother, one Joseph
